It’s Monday morning, so it’s time for me to let you all know what’s been on my mind the past week.
I’ve been thinking a lot about possible breakouts this season for Mizzou football, so let’s run through who I’m expecting to see a lot from this year and why. Plus, I’ll have a couple of house keeping notes at the end.
1. A little bit of ground rules, I guess.
I have trouble sometimes when I’m thinking about what counts as a breakout, what counts as someone being underrated, what counts as someone being overrated. That kind of stuff.
As an example. (If asked, I would take the under) Does Kevin Coleman having an 85-catch season count as a breakout? Technically he has zero for Mizzou, but he did have 74 for Mississippi State last year. That would still be a big increase year-to-year, but he was brought in this season specifically to be the leader in the wide receiver room. Again, I don’t think he’s going to get to 75ish catches again, he was most of what the Bulldogs had available in the receiver room last year and the Tigers have a deeper group.
Would Beau Pribula count as a breakout if he’s the starting quarterback and is … fine?
What level of play would Pribula or Sam Horn have to produce to count as a breakout season? Neither have started a game before, so it seems to me like just being an average quarterback throughout the year should probably count as a breakout.
What about for the non-transfers? What would it take for Marquis Johnson to count as a breakout season in his junior year? He’s never had 400 receiving yards and his touchdown high for a year is three his freshman season.
I don’t have an exact answer to any of those questions right now, but I’m going to do my best to explain point by point why I think each player I’m talking about counts and what my expectations have become after talking to people about the guys and the growing expectations for them.